Virtualisation
At its most basic, server virtualisation is a technique that allows one physical server to run multiple software instances, each one with its own operating system, own settings, own applications, and each one believing that it is actually running on its own dedicated piece of hardware.
Virtualisation technology inserts a thin layer of software directly on top of the server hardware and allows multiple virtual machines to be run on a single server. Each virtual machine behaves exactly like a real server and can be configured (CPU/Memory etc.) as required.
Plan B DR implement VMware Inc.’s Virtualised IT Infrastructure products to create our Rescue Platforms. We believe VMware offer the most stable, efficient and manageable commercial grade virtualisation technology available in the market today.
VMware’s infrastructure products allow us not only to create virtualised environments but also to manage our extended environment where we run many virtual machines and need to quickly manage resources across multiple systems. It allows us to centralise management of all our systems giving us control of our multiple virtual servers. It also allows rapid provision of new applications, rapid movement of virtual machines across physical servers, and comprehensive management of resource pools.
The key benefit that virtualisation brings Plan B DR and its customers, is to break the bond between an operating system and the hardware it is running on. Traditionally, if you want to take a copy of a server (a server image) and get that copy to run immediately, without alteration, on an alternative piece of hardware, you would have to ensure that the new hardware was absolutely identical to the original machine.
Hence the traditional disaster recovery approach (to achieve a ‘warm standby’ level of recovery) is to have a second set of identical hardware sat in a second geographically separate data room just incase it is ever needed in a disaster. That second set of hardware would still need managing in exactly the same way the live hardware is managed, and also need data shipping to it periodically. This is costly and many companies find it impossible to justify versus the perceived level of risk.
Plan B’s use of a virtualised Rescue Platform means we can take an image of a customer’s system and get it running quickly on our hardware freeing the customer from the costs of buying, maintaining and updating their own dedicated disaster recovery servers.
To get a system image taken on a physical server to run within a virtualised machine does require a degree of customisation. This sorts out things like driver changes, network changes and also sets the systems up to boot and run in the Rescue Platform environment. This process is known as the Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion. Plan B DR use our own proprietary technology to do this automatically each time we process a new Snapshot to create a new Rescue Image of a customer’s machine.
Once a physical server’s image has been converted to run on the virtual platform (P2V) it becomes completely independent of the hardware and can be run without alteration on any system running the same virtualisation technology.
Once a Client image has been converted and tested it can be brought back up on the Plan B DR recovery platform as easily as booting up a physical server.
